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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Saving Money with Cloth Diapers and the Earth Too

I am a first time, stay-at-home mom, living near the beach in Southern California. That said, we try to consider the earth with many of our daily tasks, which is why we use cloth diapers.

I started out using disposable diapers because I was afraid of taking on the expense of cloth diapers, and then NOT liking them.

Cloth diapers can be cost prohibitive due to their somewhat high startup cost, but they should pay for themselves in the long run, right?
My mom had heard a lot about gdiapers, so I decided to grab a 2 pack of diapers when I was in Babies-R-Us. I quickly realized that 2 cloth diapers and a pack of flushable inserts weren't going to get me very far at all and I had spent almost $50! That is more than I would spend on disposables in 1 month.

Then, I started experiencing some serious landfill guilt thinking about how many diapers I was throwing away. As my son grew, these diapers filled a few more bags of nasty before I took the initial economical plunge of a little over $150. I got a a 6 pack of gDiapers, 3 single gDiapers, and 2 - 6 packs of gCloth inserts. I am in the process of getting the size L gDiapers, but am finding some excellent deals of a little less than $10/diaper. The clothes are good for size Med thru XL so we are all set, there.

You can read other posts on this blog to find these types of deals...

Now, I do 1 load of laundry every night and this gets me by. I could use more cloth inserts, but they are $30/6, so I can wait a bit until I find a KILLER deal.

What does this all cost compared to disposables?

For the sake of argument, I am going to use my favorite and CHEAPEST everyday disposable diaper deal, at Costco. It is over 200 diapers for under $40. That will last me 1 month. For 2.5 years of diapering, that will be a grand total of $1100.

With a little hustle, you can get gdiapers for an average of $14 ea. If you get 10 diapers in 4 sizes (40 total), you will spend about $560. 12 cloth inserts in 2 sizes will run you about $120.00 for a grand total of $680. That saves almost $500 over the course of your diapering if you stick to this plan. If you are going to want a little more freedom from your washer and dryer, your savings dwindles, but you can still stay clear your bottom line.

I know some people will argue that you waste water and energy washing and drying. Well, with the high efficiency of today's washers and dryers, a few diapers each day is not going to put the earth into a tailspin. I personally like the gDiapers because you can simply change the gCloth liner for pee that gets trapped in the waterproof liner doesn't get on the cloth cover. That is less washing for me!
I would definitely recommend cloth diapering to save money. If you reuse your diapers on a second or third child, you can save some serious cash!